Laying our own floors: Prepping

Once we picked the floors, we had to wait a few weeks until Andy would be home. He decided he wanted to do the floors on a day I worked since I wouldn't be of much help in the actual laying process. We picked a weekend I worked on a Saturday so that we could do the prep on Friday. Earlier in the week we went and picked up the floors and brought them home so that the wood could adjust to the temperature and moisture level in the house. So our front hall looked like this:

 

On Friday we took to prepping the floors, which was surprisingly easy. Andy took all the baseboards off in the front room and down the hall, he said this was kind of a pain because of the way the installers had nailed it but it went quick. Here's a picture of the floors without baseboards:

Once the baseboards were off it was time to roll the carpet and padding up and cart it away:

That was really easy, very heavy, but easy. Especially since there are still construction dumpsters on our street. Shh, don't tell. Voila, no carpet:

Now the next part was probably the most difficult, we had to take all the carpet strips that held the carpet in place out and also pull up any staples or nails in the sub floor. It was more tedious than hard and took the most time. I pulled the staples while Andy removed the transitions. Once all that was done we had to sweep up all the debris, which was not that pleasant, I found some things under the padding I'm not pleased about, like dead insects and some dirt clods from the construction aspect. The very last thing that had to be done was sanding the floor and priming it so our naughty kitty couldn't find the spot she had peed.

Sorry for the blurry picture, I was tired by this point.

We used Kilz 2 on the floor, which we had read would cover the area where the cat missed her litter box and keep her from smelling it. That had to dry for a few hours and at this point it was around 9:30 so we decided to give it up for the night and Andy would continue on in the morning.

Andy will be posting about the next steps because he was the one doing them, so it may be a few days before that post goes up.

 

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Laying our own floors: The what and the why.

We decided, pretty much as soon as we moved in, that we were going to slowly replace all the flooring in the house. We opted for the most basic carpet in most of the house, minus the kitchen and master bath, because it was free and the upgraded options didn't do a whole lot for us. We figured that as the carpet wore we would be able to just replace it with better options. Well that happened a lot sooner than we imagined it would in the front room, due to a trouble making kitty and the fact that our builder used crap carpet and installers. This sped up the process a bit and we had to decide on a flooring type. We landed on hardwood/bamboo because the front room is rarely used and we figured it might be a formal dining room down the line. So we took on the task of finding a color/type. This took way longer than expected. We went to about 5 different stores and brought home dozens of samples. Nothing looked great with the purple paint in the front room and if it did it turned out to be too expensive. Finally after weeks (yes weeks!) of deliberation, we decided it was easier to paint and pick a floor that we loved and fit our budget. We landed on this:

Sorry about the flash glare!

This is Home Legend hand-scraped bamboo in cafe, which can be found at Home Depot. We loved the color, the hand-scraped detail, and it passed the durability test (we hit it with a high heel multiple times, didn't leave a mark). Once we picked it we had to pick a time to lay the floor. It was going to be a few weeks at the time because Andy was going to be gone. Next post, I'll talk about prepping the floors.

 

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Beige begone

One of the more problematic aspects of building was the paint color; builder beige as it is more affectionately known. It's in our whole house and while it's a nice beige, its not what you want to stare at day after day. So on Labor Day weekend we decided to chip away at the beige. We had already painted our living room and part of the front room, but we decided the front room was too dark so we did a redo of the three walls in New Bamboo by Behr. The forth wall we did in Weathered Moss by Behr. Take a look:

I'll be honest, the green is bright. I'm not sure about it. I love the grey, I am considering doing the whole room in that color but I'm going to live with it with the floors in and see how I feel. We also decided to paint our bedroom as well in Pencil Point also by Behr.

I love how the dark grey contrasts with the white furniture, but it's so dark I was scared to do all the walls so I stopped with one and will again live with it for a bit before I decide what to do. I will also take opinions on all of the above, please and thank you!

 

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Project budgeting

Like I said in my last post, things have been busy in the SalTal household. Andy and I decided a few months back to start a monthly project budget. We decided that we would take X amount each month to tackle major projects on our list for the house. This does not include small DIY or crafty projects, which rarely are more than $50. For example things like painting a room, redoing floors, a kitchen backsplash, we would consider a big monthly project. We decided to do it this way so that it didn't seem to overwhelming and it's been working out nicely. We have taken on three big projects since we instituted the budget: the kitchen backsplash, the bamboo floors, and painting two spaces. All of which I plan to blog about in the near future. Three projects may not seem like that many since we have been utilizing the project budget for a little over five months, but we created a rule that we could roll over a previous month's budget to tackle something we really wanted to do. We had to do this with the floor project, which was totally worth it. I don't think that we will always have a project budget every month, eventually the house will be settled and we will only want to take on bigger projects as needed, but for now with so much to do I think this system will work.

How does everyone else tackle major projects? Do you save a little over time or just budget it in each month? Or some kind of combination of the two?

 

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Adventures in Adulthood

I very rarely feel like an adult, usually I feel about 16, but a really awesome 16 year old who lives with her BFF and has expendable income. Anyway, I sometimes get a wake up call and realize I have grown up. One of those wake up calls happened the other day when we decided to go shopping for tile and I got excited. Like freak-out-OMG-YAY excited. Yes, I got that excited about tile. WTH happened to me? I remember hating going to home improvement stores as a kid but now I love it. It's moments like that one that make me realize I am a little bit of a grown up. Only a little.

Anywho, more on the tile later. Yay!